Quotes about education
page 21

“To avoid this error, the error of assuming that that to be widely read and to be well read are the same thing, we must consider a certain distinction in types of learning. … In the history of education, men have often distinguished between learning by instruction and learning by discovery. … Discovery stands to instruction as learning without a teacher stands to learning through the help of one. In both cases the activity of learning goes on in the one who learns. It would be a mistake to suppose that discovery is active learning, and instruction passive. There is no inactive learning, just as there is no inactive reading. This is so true, in fact, that a better way to make the distinction clear is to call instruction “aided discovery.””

Mortimer J. Adler book How to Read a Book

Source: How to Read a Book (1940, 1972), p. 11-12

Men, Way, Error, History

“The law of value is no longer simply a reflection of the relations of production; the monopoly capitalists — even while employing purely empirical methods — surround that law with a complicated scaffolding that turns it into a docile servant. The superstructure imposes a kind of art in which the artist must be educated. Rebels are subdued by the machine, and only exceptional talents may create their own work. The rest become shamefaced hirelings or are crushed.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Man and Socialism in Cuba (1965)

Law, Art

“People should be judged on the basis of their performance, not nationality, personality, education, or personal traits and skills.”

Marvin Bower (1903–2003) American business theorist

Source: The Will to Manage (1966), p. 24 cited in: Rodney B. Plimpton (1976) Top management leadership and organizational performance. p. 52

People, Personality

“I am afraid the remark is too honest, and comes from the same origin as the maxim of the tyrant, "If you would rule the world quietly, you must keep it amused." I notice too, that the ground on which eminent public servants urge the claims of popular education is fear: "This country is filling up with thousands and millions of voters, and you must educate them to keep them from our throats."”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), New England Reformers

World, Fear, Country

“What you won't hear, except from me, is that 'Let the good times roll' is an especially risky message for African-Americans. The plain fact is that they tend to possess poorer native judgment than members of better-educated groups. Thus they need stricter moral guidance from society. … In contrast to New Orleans, there was only minimal looting after the horrendous 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan — because, when you get down to it, [the] Japanese aren't blacks.”

Steve Sailer (1958) American journalist and movie critic

Racial Reality And The New Orleans Nightmare https://archive.is/20121211061614/www.vdare.com/sailer/050903_new_orleans.htm, VDARE, September 3, 2005

Time

“Supporters of bilingual education today imply that students like me miss a great deal by not being taught in their family’s language. What they seem not to recognize is that, as a socially disadvantaged child, I considered Spanish to be a private language. What I needed to learn in school was that I had the right—and the obligation—to speak the public language of los gringos.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982)

School, Family, Support, Learning

“I always maintain that the great service that education renders to democracy is the same service that we hope to gain from religion. They work, or ought to work, hand in hand. It is to keep the moral weights and measures true to standard; and not only true to standard—true to the highest standard. And let us have that applied impartially to all classes of the community from the top to the bottom. There are those who would empty the conception of the state of all moral qualities, and they would confine education to a bread-and-butter business. If I may paraphrase Nurse Cavell's dying words, such patriotism is not enough. Moral standards, applied as I suggest, are the surest way to achieve that fundamental social unity which is postulated by democracy.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the Canadian Club in Toronto (6 August 1927), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), pp. 79-80.
1927

Religion, Hope, Way, Democracy

“We have, all of us, with a few unlucky exceptions, for which special schools are required, hands, eyes, and ears; and all these members should be trained and practiced in elementary education, as a means of improving the use of these organs, and so improving the great organ which directs and oversees the work of hands, eyes, and ears, and judges of its own work and its own acts.”

George Long (1800–1879) English classical scholar

An Old Man's Thoughts on Many Things, Of Education I

School, Training

“Here I must inject a personal note—I never shed blood upon the field of Sidwell Friends, nor did I fight the battles of Yale Law. I am a miner's son, and my father was a self-made man who unmade himself during my youth. Education was not a family legacy, and my kin belonged to the United Mine Workers of America, not to Skull and Bones. My forebears fought this country's wars from the bottom ranks, and I began my own military career as a private. I have felt the full arrogance of those to whom much was given, and personally, wish that I might come to bury the elite, not to praise them. Yet, those who would rise need examples to emulate. It grates on me to write it, but our military needs a return of the nation's elite to the officer corps, to the extent that a traditional elite, with its spotty but essential ideals of service, still exists.”

Ralph Peters (1952) American military officer, writer, pundit

autobiographical aside from Beyond Terror, p. 319. Originally part of an essay entitled "Hucksters in Uniform" which appeared in the May 1999 edition of The Washington Monthly.
1990s, Hucksters in Uniform (1999)

War, Youth, Family, Law

“Until lately the West has regarded it as self-evident that the road to education lay through great books. No man was educated unless he was acquainted with the masterpieces of his tradition. There never was much doubt in anybody's mind about which the masterpieces were. They were the books that had endured and that the common voice of mankind called the finest creations, in writing, of the Western tradition.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) philosopher and university president

Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)

Books

“I was just always really into having pets and felt a real connection with animals, and I guess as I became aware … from where it was coming to my plate it's just I couldn't eat it—it was disgusting. I stopped eating read meat … but I still ate chicken for a long time, and we were on tour and saw a chicken truck go by with these chickens that were just bleeding—it was just disgusting. And that was it. I haven't had a piece of it since. … We're not actually born ready to eat meat, it's something you have to develop and it's not something that you need to develop. The issue with the whole thing is just education and information. You know, most people don't think about it.”

Chris Adler (1972) American drummer

“Lamb of God interview,” by Peta2.com, on YouTube (19 February 2007) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D91k1aOy1tY.

People, Thinking, Time, Reading

“Educational romanticism asks too much from students at the bottom of the intellectual pile, asks the wrong things from those in the middle, and asks too little from those at the top.”

Charles Murray (1943) American libertarian political scientist, author, and columnist

The Age of Educational Romanticism http://www.aei.org/article/27962, The New Criterion, Thursday, May 1, 2008.

“The curriculum of the girl’s school should be vernacular, needle work and sanitation…teaching women amounted to loss of nationality… English education had [a] de-womanising impact on women by denying them a happy worldly life…hurt the sentiments of the Hindus…teaching Hindu women to read English would ruin their precious traditional virtues and would make them immoral and subordinate.”

Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856–1920) Indian independence activist

His opposition to teaching women in English.[Pati, Biswamoy, Bal Gangadhar Tilak: Popular Readings, http://books.google.com/books?id=U4TWzCkjrm4C, 2011, Primus Books, 978-93-80607-18-4, 16]

Life, Women, Happiness, School

“Statistical discrimination may be unfair and ugly, but it's hardly weird or implausible. Why is it any more weird or implausible to claim employers statistically discriminate on the basis of educational credentials?”

Bryan Caplan (1971) American political scientist

[The Case against Education, 15, https://books.google.com/books?id=Mws8DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA15]
The Case against Education (2018)

“Education commences at the mother's knee, and every word spoken within the hearsay of little children tends towards the formation of character.”

Hosea Ballou (1771–1852) American Universalist minister (1771–1852)

Manuscript, Sermons; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 216.

Children

“We have 6,000 kids every day drop out in this country. And they don't drop out because they're dumb. They drop out because they're bored to death. They're in a 19th century education system in a 21st century world. If we really are serious, then, first of all, we make sure that we build the curriculum around their interests, rather than just push them into something they don't care. Second thing, unleash weapons of mass instruction. I'm a passionate, ardent supporter of having music and art in every school for every student at every grade level.”

Mike Huckabee (1955) Arkansas politician

Republican presidential candidate debate, Johnston, Iowa, 2007-12-12
Republican Debates

Death, World, School, Art

“I think we're going to demonstrate the power of one-to-one computer access that's going to transform education. … The economic future will belong to the technologically adept.”

Angus King (1944) United States Senator from Maine

On his program to purchase iBook computers for Maine public schools, as quoted in "Maine Students Hit the iBooks" by Katie Dean in WIRED (9 January 2002) https://archive.is/20130630155629/www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/commentary/cultofmac/2002/01/49046

Thinking, Future

“Half the trouble about the modern man is that he is educated to understand foreign languages and misunderstand foreigners.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

Source: The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton http://books.google.com/books?id=9_m6AAAAIAAJ&q=%22Half+the+trouble+about+the+modern+man+is+that+he+is+educated+to+understand+foreign+languages+and+misunderstand+foreigners%22&pg=PA322#v=onepage (1936)

Understanding

“When I was working a man asked me "Why does a fellow like you, with an education, and who has been all over the country, end up in this out-of-the-way place working for very little on a farm?" I explained that all people who had good jobs in factories, etc. had a withholding tax for war taken from their pay, and that people who worked on farms had no tax taken from their pay. I told him that I refused to pay taxes. He was a returned soldier and said that he did not like war either, but what could a fellow do about it? I replied that we each did what we really wanted to.”

Ammon Hennacy (1893–1970) American Christian radical

The Book of Ammon

War, People, Way, Country

“How do you get rid of the trash? It's out there in society, it's going on every day […] You can educate children an awful lot easier than you can get rid of the trash.”

Joycelyn Elders (1933) American pediatrician, public health administrator, and former Surgeon General of the United States

Source: [Bob, Sipchen, http://www.aegis.com/news/lt/1997/LT970701.html, Straight Talk From a Straight Shooter Journeys: Joycelyn Elders was known for her outspokenness during her run, Los Angeles Times, E-1, July 3, 1997, 2007-05-20]

Children

“There is no outward mark of politeness that does not have a profound moral reason. The right education would be that which taught the outward mark and the moral reason together.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe book Elective Affinities

Es gibt kein äußeres Zeichen der Höflichkeit, das nicht einen tiefen sittlichen Grund hätte. Die rechte Erziehung wäre, welche dieses Zeichen und den Grund zugleich überlieferte.
Bk. II, Ch. 5, R. J. Hollingdale, trans. (1971), p. 195
Elective Affinities (1809)

“In any case paramount traditional heads of provinces should, in my view, welcome the fact that their people who have had education and experience can relieve them as in the traditional line of delegation from the many functions the chiefs are required to do now, particularly if they are public servants or have not had the background of education and service as their people.”

Epeli Ganilau (1951) Fijian politician

Views on the chiefly system

People

“How are men and women to think about their maleness and their femaleness in this twentieth century, in which so many of our old ideas must be made new? Have we over-domesticated men, denied their natural adventurousness, tied them down to machines that are after all only glorified spindles and looms, mortars and pestles and digging sticks, all of which were once women's work? Have we cut women off from their natural closeness to their children, taught them to look for a job instead of the touch of a child's hand, for status in a competitive world rather than a unique place by a glowing hearth? In educating women like men, have we done something disastrous to both men and women alike, or have we only taken one further step in the recurrent task of building more and better on our original human nature?”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1940s, Male and Female (1949), p. 1; Start of first chapter entitled "The Significance of the Questions We Ask"

Women, Men, Children, World

“Valuable vocational courses have vanished along with the further education colleges that once delivered them. Now all such colleges are universities, every other tutor is a professor and all get degrees which are supposed to be of equal value. But of course this is nonsense on stilts. A degree in golf-course management does not have the same value as a degree in physics.”

Melanie Phillips (1951) British journalist

http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles/archives/001420.html

Universe

“I've got to try and educate not only the players but the Derby fans and the board of directors that…”

Phil Brown (footballer) (1959) English association football player and manager

29-Jun-2005, Radio 5
I'll learn 'em.

“This moment of brotherhood in the same faith and of pledging to fight for our Christian country against the cheating Judaic hordes, will never be forgotten. We who were fighting each other but yesterday, were now embracing. The orientation guidelines in our (student) meetings were the writings of our national geniuses Bogdan Petriceicu Hajdeu, Vasile Conta, Mihail Eminescu, Vasile Alecsandri, etc. but especially the writings and lectures of Professor Cuza, the writings of Professor Paulescu, the lessons in national education of Professor Gavanescul.”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

See the sections on A.C. Cuza and Nicolae Paulescu.
For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Jewish Problem

Faith, Fight, Cheating, Country

“It is a fundamental and deplorable error by which we in this country have confused education with the acquisition of knowledge…. Amount of knowledge is in itself not of first importance, but to make the best use of what we know. The easy assumption of our educationists that we have only to supply the mind with a smattering of facts in each department of knowledge and the mind can be trusted to develop itself and take its own suitable road is contrary to science, contrary to human experience…. Much as we have lost as a nation, we have always preserved our intellectual alertness, quickness and originality; but even this last gift is threatened by our University system, and if it goes, it will be the beginning of irretrievable degradation and final extinction.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Early 1900s, Centenary Edition of Sri Aurobindo's works (Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, 1972) 3.125-127
India's Rebirth

Error, Knowledge, Universe, Science

“If we turn back to the time when the first compulsory education act was passed, we find that the capitalists of England fought these acts with all their might, but that they soon withdrew their opposition and supported them. For the employers recognised that though the children would know a little more, the amount could be so restricted that the result would only be to make them better wage slaves, knowing no more of freedom than what we have known and experienced of it.”

William Earsman (1884–1965) Australian left-wing activist

The Proletariat and Education: The Necessity for Labor Colleges

Children, Support, Freedom, Time

“It (insecurity) is a feeling that is deeply felt and is shared by most members of my community, irrespective of religion, status, education, background or place of origin.”

Joni Madraiwiwi (1957–2016) Fijian politician

Speech to the Fiji Law Society, 2 July 2005.

Religion, Feeling, Communication

“My grandfather just had a grade-school education. But in that country store he taught me more about equality in the eyes of the Lord than all my professors at Georgetown; more about the intrinsic worth of every individual than all the philosophers at Oxford; and he taught me more about the need for equal justice than all the jurists at Yale Law School.”

Bill Clinton (1946) 42nd President of the United States

"A Place Called Hope" (July 16, 1992)
1990s, A Place Called Hope (16 July 1992)

School, Justice, Law, Country

“Sir Walter Scott, Wordsworth, Byron…Carlyle, Tennyson, John Henry Newman…Thackeray, Browning and Dickens. There was a galaxy of talent of the highest order in a literature that stands second to none in the world…No country can compare with our own in the literature of that period…I have always firmly held that there is no race with more ability latent than our own, or with a higher aptitude for mechanical genius. When the College was founded, Hargreaves, Arkwright and Crompton, all sons of working men, were inventing the machines which brought the cotton industry. I mention these names to show the stuff of which our people are made, and how that stuff is worth training and educating. It would be a very interesting subject, for anyone who cared to explore it, to see how many of the mechanical inventions which are light-heartedly attributed to Americans are really the product of British brains, whether they were British brains which have gone to work in that country, or the brains of children of British parents who have gone there.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at Birkbeck College (20 March 1924), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 143-144.
1924

Men, Children, People, World

“The value of metaphors should not be underestimated. Metaphors have the virtue of an expected behavior that is understood by all. Unnecessary communication and misunderstandings are reduced. Learning and education are quicker. In effect metaphors are a way of internalizing and abstracting concepts allowing one's thinking to be on a higher plane and low-level mistakes to be avoided.”

Fernando J. Corbató (1926–2019) American computer scientist

Source: On Building Systems That Will Fail (1991), p. 81

Way, Behavior, Communication, Thinking

“When Christianity is received, it stimulates the faculties, and calls forth new ideas, new motives, and new sentiments. It has been the mother of all modern education.”

James McCosh (1811–1894) British philosopher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 139.

Motivation, Idea

“Modern natural history deals only incidentally with the identity of plants and animals, and only incidentally with their habits and behaviors. It deals principally with their relations to each other, their relation to the soil and water in which they grow, and their relations to the human beings who sing about 'my country' but see little or nothing of its inner workings. This new science of relationships is called ecology, but what we call it matters nothing. The question is, does the educated citizen know he is only a cog in an ecological mechanism? That if he will work with that mechanism his mental wealth and his material wealth can expand indefinitely? But that if he refuses to work with it, it will ultimately grind him to dust? If education does not teach us these things, then what is education for?”

Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American writer and scientist

"Natural History: The Forgotten Science" [1938]; Published in Round River, Luna B. Leopold (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1966, p. 63-64.
1930s

Behavior, History, Question, Nature

“In the field of education. I refer to the meaning of the word "basic," …the meaning given to this word by some educators is not its "real" meaning. The word "basic,"… has been assigned certain meanings in order to further an education philosophy which is thought to be both sensible and effective…. neither you nor I are under any obligation to accept their definition of what is "basic." …In short, the definition of something is usually the starting point of a dispute, not the settlement.”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Language Education in a Knowledge Context (1980)

“Moving the human rights agenda forward requires the promotion of a social and economic environment conducive to respect for human dignity. It is patent that individuals subjected to violence, coercion and war cannot fully exercise their rights. It is thus important to reaffirm the credo of the Charter of the United Nations that peace is a condition for the enjoyment of all human rights. The human right to peace also has important economic, social and cultural components. Following the entry into force of the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights on 5 May 2013, individuals can invoke violations before the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Thus, the right to, inter alia, health, a safe environment, food, water and education has acquired even more resonance in the life of each individual.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

United Nations General Assembly - Promotion of a democratic and equitable international order http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/IntOrder/A-68-284_en.pdf. 2013

Life, War, Health, Peace

“There is a lesson to be learned from the history of sciences, technology and societies, if you look at the specific needs of each country at defining a scientific policy, policy that can not be the same everywhere: the basis of anything is education, so that people not only become qualified, but essentially become able to create new knowledge.”

José Leite Lopes (1918–2006) Brazilian physicist

Il y a une leçon à tirer de l'histoire des sciences, de la technologie et des sociétés, si l'on regarde les besoins spécifiques de chaque pays pour définir une politique scientifique, politique qui ne peut pas être identique partout : la base de tout, c'est l'éducation des gens, pour qu'ils soient non seulement compétents, mais surtout capables de créer de nouvelles connaissances.
in Science et développement: une politique scientifique peut-elle tirer un enseignement de l'histoire des sciences, in an edition by [Patrick Petitjean, Catherine Jami, Anne Marie Moulin, Science and empires: historical studies about scientific development and European expansion, Springer, 1992, 0792315189, 370]

People, History, Knowledge, Learning

“The usual is always mediocre. When nature takes it into her head to make a man, she fits him with her own equipment and educates him in her own school.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Voltaire (1916)

School, Nature

“Transforming hereditary privilege into ‘merit,’ the existing system of educational selection, with the Big Three [Harvard, Princeton, Yale] as its capstone, provides the appearance if not the substance of equality of opportunity. In so doing, it legitimates the established order as one that rewards ability over the prerogatives of birth. The problem with a ‘meritocracy,’ then, is not only that its ideals are routinely violated (though that is true), but also that it veils the power relations beneath it. For the definition of ‘merit,’ including the one that now prevails in America’s leading universities, always bears the imprint of the distribution of power in the larger society. Those who are able to define ‘merit’ will almost invariably possess more of it, and those with greater resources—cultural, economic and social—will generally be able to ensure that the educational system will deem their children more meritorious.”

Jerome Karabel (1950) American sociologist

The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton (Houghton Mifflin: 2005), pp. 549-550.

Children, Birth, Problem, Universe

“Receiving education nurtures human wisdom.”

Husayn ibn Ali (626–680) The grandson of Muhammad and the son of Ali ibn Abi Talib

Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol.78, p. 128
Regarding Wisdom

Wisdom

“Have you ever wondered, perhaps, why opinions which the majority of people quite naturally hold are, if anyone dares express them publicly, denounced as 'controversial, 'extremist', 'explosive', 'disgraceful', and overwhelmed with a violence and venom quite unknown to debate on mere political issues? It is because the whole power of the aggressor depends upon preventing people from seeing what is happening and from saying what they see.

The most perfect, and the most dangerous, example of this process is the subject miscalled, and deliberately miscalled, 'race'. The people of this country are told that they must feel neither alarm nor objection to a West Indian, African and Asian population which will rise to several millions being introduced into this country. If they do, they are 'prejudiced', 'racialist'... A current situation, and a future prospect, which only a few years ago would have appeared to everyone not merely intolerable but frankly incredible, has to be represented as if welcomed by all rational and right-thinking people. The public are literally made to say that black is white. Newspapers like the Sunday Times denounce it as 'spouting the fantasies of racial purity' to say that a child born of English parents in Peking is not Chinese but English, or that a child born of Indian parents in Birmingham is not English but Indian. It is even heresy to assert the plain fact that the English are a white nation. Whether those who take part know it or not, this process of brainwashing by repetition of manifest absurdities is a sinister and deadly weapon. In the end, it renders the majority, who are marked down to be the victims of violence or revolution or tyranny, incapable of self-defence by depriving them of their wits and convincing them that what they thought was right is wrong. The process has already gone perilously far, when political parties at a general election dare not discuss a subject which results from and depends on political action and which for millions of electors transcends all others in importance; or when party leaders can be mesmerised into accepting from the enemy the slogans of 'racialist' and 'unChristian' and applying them to lifelong political colleagues...

In the universities, we are told that education and the discipline ought to be determined by the students, and that the representatives of the students ought effectively to manage the institutions. This is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but it is nonsense which it is already obligatory for academics and journalists, politicians and parties, to accept and mouth upon pain of verbal denunciation and physical duress.

We are told that the economic achievement of the Western countries has been at the expense of the rest of the world and has impoverished them, so that what are called the 'developed' countries owe a duty to hand over tax-produced 'aid' to the governments of the undeveloped countries. It is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but it is nonsense with which the people of the Western countries, clergy and laity, but clergy especially—have been so deluged and saturated that in the end they feel ashamed of what the brains and energy of Western mankind have done, and sink on their knees to apologise for being civilised and ask to be insulted and humiliated.

Then there is the 'civil rights' nonsense. In Ulster we are told that the deliberate destruction by fire and riot of areas of ordinary property is due to the dissatisfaction over allocation of council houses and opportunities for employment. It is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but that has not prevented the Parliament and government of the United Kingdom from undermining the morale of civil government in Northern Ireland by imputing to it the blame for anarchy and violence.

Most cynically of all, we are told, and told by bishops forsooth, that communist countries are the upholders of human rights and guardians of individual liberty, but that large numbers of people in this country would be outraged by the spectacle of cricket matches being played here against South Africans. It is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but that did not prevent a British Prime Minister and a British Home Secretary from adopting it as acknowledged fact.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

The "enemy within" speech during the 1970 general election campaign; speech to the Turves Green Girls School, Northfield, Birmingham (13 June 1970), from Still to Decide (Eliot Right Way Books, 1972), pp. 36-37.
1970s

Pain, People, World, Feeling

“[Religion] is predominantly evil and entirely deceitful, has only negative correlations statistically, and is frequently maliciously abusive physically mentally and emotionally. It has historically always obstructed education and retarded or impeded progress in whatever application it has ever touched. All the worst atrocities in history were done in the name of religion and our greatest advances were made in opposition to it. I’m an antitheist because religion is factually historically ethically and morally wrong.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Patheos, Anti-theist Answers to Christian Questions http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2015/11/22/anti-theist-answers-to-christian-questions/ (November 22, 2015)

Religion, History, Evil

“We still remain prone to doctrines, philosophies, faiths, and beliefs that spread through the populations of entire civilizations. It is hard to imagine any foolproof ways to protect ourselves from such infections. …the best we can do is to try to educate our children to learn more skills of critical thinking and methods of scientific verification.”

Marvin Minsky book The Emotion Machine

The Emotion Machine (2006)

Children, Faith, Way, Imagination

“I could just tell you it's all bunk; but then you wouldn't be empowered to understand why. Other than to quote, "Oh, Doctor Tyson said…" And I never want you to quote me citing my authority as a scientist for your knowing something. If that's what you have to resort to I have failed as an educator. As an educator, it's my duty to empower you to think. So that you can go forth and think accurate thoughts about how the world is put together. Inoculating you against the [people] out there who will exploit your ignorance on anything they possibly can.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist and science communicator

Neil DeGrasse Tyson Debunks 2012 Armageddon http://www.tompainesghost.com/2010/06/neil-degrasse-tyson-debunks-2012.html after the James Webb telescope panel discussion in Battery Park at the World Science Festival, June 4th, 2010 2010s

People, World, Quotes, Understanding

“This is going to be an election that's based on competence, because people are tired of these nice people. And they're tired of being ripped off by everybody in the world. And they're tired of spending more money on education than any nation in the world per capita, than any nation in the world, and we are 26th in the world, 25 countries are better than us in education. And some of them are like third world countries. But we're becoming a third word country, because of our infrastructure, our airports, our roads, everything. So one of the things I did, and I said, you know what I'll do. I'll do it. Because a lot of people said, "He'll never run. Number one, he won't want to give up his lifestyle."”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

They're right about that, but I'm doing it.
2010s, 2015, Presidential Bid Announcement (June 16, 2015)

Money, People, World, Country

“It should not for a moment be supposed that cultivation of the intellect leads a man to shrink from inflicting pain. Many educated men are no more humane, are in fact far less so, than many comparatively uneducated people.”

Henry Jacob Bigelow (1818–1890) American surgeon

Source: Surgical Anaesthesia (1894), p. 365

Men, Pain, People

“The day the peasants will be educated in the truth, tyrants and slaves will be impossible on earth.”

Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807–1882) Italian general and politician

Il giorno in cui i contadini saranno educati nel vero, i tiranni e gli schiavi saranno impossibili sulla terra.
Alla Società del Tiro in Ganzo, Caprera, 29 August 1864, in Scritti politici e militari, ricordi e pensieri inediti, p. 356.

Truth

“The success of the missions need not have been so meagre but for certain factors which may be discussed now. In the first place, the missionary brought with him an attitude of moral superiority and a belief in his own exclusive righteousness. The doctrine of the monopoly of truth and revelation, as claimed by William of Aubruck to Batu Khan when he said 'he that believeth not shall be condemned by God', is alien to the Hindu and Buddhist mind. To them the claim of any sect that it alone possesses the truth and others shall be `condemned' has always seemed unreasonable. Secondly the association of Christian missionary work with aggressive imperialism introduced political complications. National sentiment could not fail to look upon missionary activity as inimical to the country's interests. That diplomatic pressure, extra‑territoriality and sometimes support of gun‑boats had been resorted to in the interests of the foreign missionaries could not be easily forgotten. Thirdly, the sense of European superiority which the missionaries perhaps unconsciously inculcated produced also its reaction. Even during the days of unchallenged European political supremacy no Asian people accepted the cultural superiority of the West. The educational activities of the missionaries stressing the glories of European culture only led to the identification of the work of the missions with Western cultural aggression.”

K. M. Panikkar (1895–1963) Indian diplomat, academic and historian

Asia and Western Dominance: a survey of the Vasco Da Gama epoch of Asian history, 1498–1945

God, People, Truth, Support

“I think the problem with the country is that we operate on a sickness model, not a wellness model… Basically, we treat people who become ill. What we don't do is do a very good job in keeping them healthy in the first place… We lose all the educational benefits, all the things we could be doing, all the things we ought to be doing, in terms of food safety… because the emphasis is on sickness. But I really don't think there's a conspiracy to make people sick so we can heal them. That I don't agree with.”

Howard Dean (1948) American political activist

Source: Real Time with Bill Maher, October 15, 2004

People, Food, Problem, Thinking

“American ideals of opportunity and equality come to us across the generations. And they have attracted millions from across the world. Yet there are young Americans growing up here, under this flag, who doubt the promise and justice of our country. They live in neighborhoods occupied by gangs and ruled by fear. They are entitled by law to an education, yet do not receive an education. They hear talk of opportunity and see little evidence of opportunity around them.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2002, Compassionate Conservatism (April 2002)

World, Fear, Justice, Law

“[I do not] carry such information in my mind since it is readily available in books. …The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

In response to not knowing the speed of sound as included in the Edison Test: New York Times (18 May 1921); Einstein: His Life and Times (1947) Philipp Frank, p. 185; Einstein, A Life (1996) by Denis Brian, p. 129; "Einstein Due Today" (February 2005) edited by József Illy, Manuscript 25-32 of the Einstein Paper Project; all previous sources as per Einstein His Life and Universe (2007) by Walter Isaacson, p. 299 Unsourced variants: "I never commit to memory anything that can easily be looked up in a book" and "Never memorize what you can look up in books." (The second version is found in "Recording the Experience" (10 June 2004) at The Library of Congress http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/world/world-record.html, but no citation to Einstein's writings is given). 1920s

Books, Thinking, Learning, Training

“The colored people did not intrude themselves upon us. They were brought here in chains and held in the communities where they are now chiefly found by a cruel slave code. Happily for both races, they are now free. They have from a standpoint of ignorance and poverty—which was our shame, not theirs—made remarkable advances in education and in the acquisition of property. They have as a people shown themselves to be friendly and faithful toward the white race under temptations of tremendous strength. They have their representatives in the national cemeteries, where a grateful Government has gathered the ashes of those who died in its defense. They have furnished to our Regular Army regiments that have won high praise from their commanding officers for courage and soldierly qualities and for fidelity to the enlistment oath. In civil life they are now the toilers of their communities, making their full contribution to the widening streams of prosperity which these communities are receiving. Their sudden withdrawal would stop production and bring disorder into the household as well as the shop. Generally they do not desire to quit their homes, and their employers resent the interference of the emigration agents who seek to stimulate such a desire.”

Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901) American politician, 23rd President of the United States (in office from 1889 to 1893)

First State of the Union Address (1889)

Life, People, Faith, Color

“To train and educate the rising generation will at all times be the first object of society, to which every other will be subordinate.”

Robert Owen (1771–1858) Welsh social reformer

The Social System (1826)

Time, Training

“Some day we shall all be free. Racial hatred will die out; citizenship will be important but humanity as a whole much more so. Boundaries and territories will assume their rightful place in man's thinking, but goodwill and international understanding will matter more. Religious differences and sectarian dislikes must eventually vanish and we shall eventually recognise "one God and Father of all, Who is above all and through all and in us all."… They will emerge more rapidly when the right educational processes condition the coming generations… and when money and the products of the earth are regarded as goods to be shared.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: The Unfinished Autobiography (1951), Chapter II, Part 1

Money, God, Understanding, Thinking

“Do they believe that the aim of teaching English is to increase the exact and beautiful use of the language? Or that it is to inculcate and augment patriotism? Or that it is to diminish sorrow in the home? Or that it has some other end, cultural, economic, or military? … it was their verdict by a solemn referendum that the principal objective in teaching English was to make good spellers, and that after that came the breeding of good capitalizers. … I have maintained for years, sometimes perhaps with undue heat: that pedagogy in the United States is fast descending to the estate of a childish necromancy, and that the worst idiots, even among pedagogues, are the teachers of English. It is positively dreadful to think that the young of the American species are exposed day in and day out to the contamination of such dark minds. What can be expected of education that is carried on in the very sewers of the intellect? How can morons teach anything that is worth knowing?”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

On "teachers of English" in "The Schoolmarm's Goal" in The Lower Depths (1925)
1920s

Beauty, Home, Thinking, Teachers

“Scouting is not an abstruse or difficult science: rather it is a jolly game if you take it in the right light. In the same time it is educative, and (like Mercy) it is apt to benefit him that giveth as well as him that receives.”

Robert Baden-Powell book Aids to Scoutmastership

Aids to Scoutmastership (1920) Preface

Game, Light, Science, Time

“The history of education shows that every class which has sought to take power has prepared itself for power by an autonomous education. The first step in emancipating oneself from political and social slavery is that of freeing the mind. I put forward this new idea: popular schooling should be placed under the control of the great workers’ unions. The problem of education is the most important class problem.”

Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) Italian writer, politician, theorist, sociologist and linguist

Cited in Davidson's (1977) Antonio Gramsci: Towards an Intellectual Biography. London: Merlin Press., p. 77.

School, History, Idea, Problem

“I think that with all the emphasis on achievement, careers and competitiveness, science education has become — with notable bright spots to be sure — a joyless, alienating and frustrating experience for millions and millions of kids.
There are those science-fair-winner types and then there's the rest of the class, not grooving on the material and hence, they find out, doomed to mediocre futures. Seems like ambivalence and hostility aren't such surprising responses to such a message. … I think things might go better if the narrative of our scientific understandings of nature — what some are calling "Big History" — were told early and often, capturing the interest and imagination of students from a young age. They might then be eager to learn the problem-solving, evidence-based process of scientific inquiry that has led to these understandings.”

Ursula Goodenough (1943) American biologist

"It's Time For A New Narrative; It's Time For 'Big History'", in 13.7: Cosmos & Culture (10 February 2011) http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2011/02/10/133652898/its-time-for-a-new-narrative-its-time-for-big-history

Hostility, Age, Imagination, History

“Every election we hear about the trouble with our public education systems. Despite all of the attention and lip service this critically important issue receives, we continue to see vast opportunity for improvement. I have personally seen the devastating effects of failing schools. They impact our children in profound ways.”

Rupert Boneham (1964) American mentor, television personality, and politician

Rupert on the Issues (2011)

Children, School, Way, Personality

“Through every legitimate educational procedure the truth must be driven home to the masses of people that the race of armaments is not a means of defense but a race to mutual suicide.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

What Does God Want Us to Do About Russia? (1948)

People, Truth, Home, Suicide

“I regret the narrow contracted education of the females of my own country.”

Abigail Adams (1744–1818) 2nd First Lady of the United States (1797–1801)

Letter to John Adams (30 June 1778)

Country

“A child that knows nothing of God’s earth, of green fields, or sparkling brooks, of breezy hill and springy heather, and whose mind is stored with none of the beauties of nature, but knows only the drunkenness prevalent in the hideous slum it is forced to live in, and whose walks abroad have never extended beyond the corner public-house and the pawnshop, cannot be benefited by education. Such children grow up to depraved, and become a danger and terror to the State; wealth-destroyers instead of wealth-producers.”

William Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme (1851–1925) English industrialist, philanthropist, and politician

"Land for House," 1898

God, Children, Beauty, Nature

“Rich Cloaths, nor Cost, nor Education can
Change Nature, nor transform and Ape into a Man.”

John Ogilby (1600–1676) Scottish academic

Fab. LV: Of an Ægyptian King and his Apes
The Fables of Aesop (2nd ed. 1668)

Nature, Change

“[T]he hallmarks of Lincoln's greatness were his ability to grow and his willingness to change his mind. During the war, he had come to embrace the Radical position on immediate emancipation and the enlistment of black soldiers. In 1864 he privately suggested to Governor Hahn that Louisiana allow some blacks to vote under its new constitution, singling out the educated, propertied free blacks of New Orleans and those who had served in the Union army. In April 1865, shortly before his death, Lincoln for the first time publicly stated his support for this kind of limited black suffrage.”

Eric Foner (1943) American historian

2000s, If Lincoln Hadn't Died (2009)

Death, War, Support, Change

“As for lawyers, they seemed to grow up spontaneously; many of the first name and note in that profession were men without any education, and totally illiterate. Such a state of society was peculiar, and could not but have peculiar effects; for no other body of men, nor all the other bodies of men put together, had half so much influence as the lawyers….”

Jonathan Boucher (1738–1804) English minister

"Reminiscences of an American Loyalist" (first published serially in "Notes and Queries", 1874-)

Men

“A proper anti-swamp agenda should consist of two things. First, and most fundamentally, it should seek to reduce the size of the federal government, and cut regulations and make them as simple as possible. The more government does, the more incentive every special interest has to hire swamp creatures, for both protection and advantage. And the more complex government is, the more opportunity those creatures have to thrive in niches unknown or poorly understood by everyone except insiders. Second, and more specifically, the federal government should be wrenched out of its cozy relationship with large, established businesses and institutions in areas ranging from health care to finance to education.”

Rich Lowry (1968) American journalist

No, the Swamp Won't Be Drained (December 01, 2016)

Health, Business

“Whoever voluntarily undertakes the necessary office of rearing and educating, obtains the parental power without generation.”

Francis Hutcheson (philosopher) (1694–1746) Irish philosopher

A System Of Moral Philosophy (1755), Book II, Ch. II

Parent

“Apart from any other basis which might justify a superiority, education, as a power, raised him who possessed it over the weak, who lacked it, and the educated man counted in his circle, however large or small it was, as the mighty, the powerful, the imposing one: for he was an authority.”

Max Stirner book The False Principle of our Education

Source: The False Principle of our Education (1842), p. 12

“Even using self determination we should establish a rule to help us gain validity. It is true that it is us who examine our conscience, but a prolonged education in the perception of values makes our conscience a better tool for decision. It is also very important to think of our action as being valid for all, as if everyone in our place should act this way.”

Aldo Capitini (1899–1968) Italian philosopher and political activist

Hymn

Way, Thinking, Decision, Help

“The propagandist merely wishes you to think as he does. The educator is more modest; he is so delighted if you think at all that he is willing to let you do so in your own way.”

Everett Dean Martin (1880–1941)

Source: The Conflict of the Individual and the Mass in the Modern World (1932), p. 29

Way, Thinking

“An examination of history proves that in Christian Russia as in Christian England the husband could release himself from the marriage bond by killing his wife, over whom under Christian law he had power of life and death. Her children, as to-day in Christian England and America, are not under her control; she is to bear children but not to educate them, for as under Catholic and Protestant Christianity, women are looked upon as a lower order of beings, of an unclean nature.”

Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826–1898) American abolitionist, writer

Source: Woman, Church and State (1893), pp. 380-381

Life, Death, Women, Marriage

“Somewhere about 1893 I started teaching Scouting to young soldiers in my regiment. When these young fellows joined the Army they had learned reading, writing, and arithmetic in school but as a rule not much else. They were nice lads and made very good parade soldiers, obeyed orders, kept themselves clean and smart and all that, but they had never been taught to be men, how to look after themselves, how to take responsibility, and so on. They had not had my chances of education outside the classroom.
They had been brought up in the herd at school, they were trained as a herd in the Army; they simply did as they were told and had no ideas or initiative of their own. In action they carried out orders, but if their officer was shot they were as helpless as a flock of sheep. Tell one of them to ride out alone with a message on a dark night and ten to one he would lose his way.
I wanted to make them feel that they were a match for any enemy, able to find their way by the stars or map, accustomed to notice all tracks and signs and to read their meaning, and able to fend for themselves away from regimental cooks and barracks.”

Robert Baden-Powell (1857–1941) lieutenant-general in the British Army, writer, founder and Chief Scout of the Scout Movement

"BE PREPARED" http://www.pinetreeweb.com/bp-listener.htm, Listener Magazine (1937)

Men, School, Way, Feeling

“[My mother] closed the school the next day [after a visit from Castro's soldiers], because she knew that the purpose of education was the broadening and opening of children's minds. And she couldn't be a party to the systematic closing of minds, borders, freedoms and ideals.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

address to LULAC (July 1, 2005)
2007, 2008

Children, School, Freedom

“Codification and mechanisms do not sufficiently ensure the right to peace. What is crucial is to develop a true culture of peace. This requires education for peace. Everyone – not only children – should be educated in compromise, cooperation, empathy, solidarity, compassion, restoration and reconciliation. In short, we must learn respect for others and how to live in harmony, even if we agree to disagree. Negotiation and mediation skills must be taught so as to prevent breaches of the peace and other forms of violence. A philosophical paradigm change is necessary, so that we are not caught in the old mind-set, in the prevailing culture of violence, the logic of war, aggressive attitudes, practices of economic exploitation and cultural imperialism.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Statement by Alfred de Zayas, 20/2/2013 http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=13030&LangID=E. 2013

War, Children, Peace, Learning

“If kids were allowed to get married as soon as God made them physically able to get married & have children, they would be so busy working so hard taking care of kids, house & mate they wouldn't have time to even think about crime or all the other hanky-panky they get into!
Of course they wouldn't have time for a big education either. But who the hell needs it! See, that's another reason why they don't let them get married: "Oh, you haven't finished your education yet! It's so sad! You're just going to have to take some menial job, some dumb thing & you can't make a huge salary like you could in some big highly technical job!"”

David Berg (1919–1994) Children of God founder

All of that is not of God anyhow!-Technology is destroying the Earth!
Child Brides!

God, Children, Sadness, Hell

“… Museums are managers of consciousness. They give us an interpretation of history, of how to view the world and locate ourselves in it. They are, if you want to put it in positive terms, great educational institutions. If you want to put it in negative terms, they are propaganda machines. They're both. This is something usually not acknowledged and there's probably a good reason why: because if this were in one's consciousness, then one would be a bit more immune to brainwashing — assuming brainwashing is the intent.”

Hans Haacke (1936) conceptual political artist

1990s, Portraits: Talking with Artists at the Met, the Modern, the Louvre, and Elsewhere, 1998

World, History

“Recent biblical exegesis by Anthem’s newest organization, Hermeneutics Unlimited, had established beyond doubt that Jesus Christ was adamantly opposed to universal health-care insurance, class-action lawsuits, and corporate whistleblowers. Several prominent postrationalist theologians had successfully exposed public education for the misguided Marxist boondoggle it was, while a majority in Congress now advocated replacing the secular school system with private academies committed to sparing children the bad news that Charles Darwin had brought back from the Galápagos Islands.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008), Chapter 13 (p. 292)

Children, Health, School, Universe

“In ancient times there was no public education, except that of the forum, the theater, and the street, and the general degree of illiteracy was very high…. the early men of science were left very much to themselves and such a phrase as "the scientific culture of Alexandria in the third century B. C." does not cover any reality. In a sense, this is still true today; the real pioneers are so far ahead of the crowd (even a very literate crowd) that they remain almost alone…”

George Sarton (1884–1956) American historian of science

Preface.
A History of Science Vol.2 Hellenistic Science and Culture in the Last Three Centuries B.C. (1959)

Men, Reality, Sense, Science

“The individual is reduced to a negligible quantity, perhaps less in his consciousness than in his practice and in the totality of his obscure emotional states that are derived from this practice. The individual has become a mere cog in an enormous organization of things and powers which tear from his hands all progress, spirituality, and value in order to transform them from their subjective form into the form of a purely objective life. It needs merely to be pointed out that the metropolis is the genuine arena of this culture which outgrows all personal life. Here in buildings and educational institutions, in the wonders and comforts of space-conquering technology, in the formations of community life, and in the visible institutions of the state, is offered such an overwhelming fullness of crystallized and impersonalized spirit that the personality, so to speak, cannot maintain itself under its impact.”

Georg Simmel (1858–1918) German sociologist, philosopher, and critic

Source: The Metropolis and Modern Life (1903), p. 422

Life, Communication, Tear, Personality

“The Soviet Union does not allow any church of any kind to interfere with education, and religion is not taught in public schools. It seems to me that this is the greatest gift of the Russian Revolution to the modern world. Most educated modern men no longer believe in religious dogma. If questioned they will usually resort to double-talk before admitting the fact. But who today actually believes that this world is ruled and directed by a benevolent person of great power who, on humble appeal, will change the course of events at our request? Who believes in miracles? Many folk follow religious ceremonies and services and allow their children to learn fairy tales and so-called religious truth, which in time the children come to recognize as conventional lies told by their parents and teachers for the children's good. One can hardly exaggerate the moral disaster of the custom. We have to thank the Soviet Union for the courage to stop it.”

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963) American sociologist, historian, activist and writer

The Autobiography of W.E. Burghardt Du Bois (1968), Ch. IV : The Soviet Union; he later states in Ch. XVI : My Character: "I think the greatest gift of the Soviet Union to modern civilization was the dethronement of the clergy and the refusal to let religion be taught in the public schools."

Men, Children, Truth, World

“This mountain, I thought, was like education: The higher you climbed, the farther you could see.”

Christiaan Barnard book One Life

One Life (New York: Macmillan Company, 1970), p. 49.

Mountain

“As people do better, they start voting like Republicans…unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing.”

Karl Rove (1950) American political consultant and policy advisor

The New Yorker (February 19, 2001)

People

“The education of Peter III was undermined by a clash of unfortunate circumstances. I will relate what I have seen and heard, and that in itself will clarify many things. I saw Peter III for the first time when he was eleven years old, in Eutin at the home of his guardian, the Prince Bishop of Lübeck. Some months after the death of Duke Karl Friedrich, Peter III’s father, the Prince Bishop had in 1739 assembled all of his family at his home in Eutin to have his ward brought there. My grandmother, mother of the Prince Bishop, and my mother, sister of this same Prince, had come there from Hamburg with me. I was ten years old at the time…. It was then that I heard it said among this assembled family that the young duke was inclined to drink, that his attendants found it difficult to prevent him from getting drunk at meals, that he was restive and hotheaded, did not like his attendants and especially Brümmer, and that otherwise he showed vivacity, but had a delicate and sickly appearance. In truth, his face was pale in color and he seemed to be thin and of a delicate constitution. His attendants wanted to give this child the appearance of a mature man, and to this end they hampered and restrained him, which could only inculcate falseness in his conduct as well as his character.”

Catherine the Great (1729–1796) Empress of Russia

Memoirs

Death, Truth, Family, Color

“It is however possible, by education, to entirely invert the order of these natural phenomena: suppose that the operator [hypnotist] speaks, with each pass or with each movement that he executes, and that he says in advance what will happen, then what he said in advance can take place instead of what would have occurred naturally.”

James Braid (1795–1860) Scottish surgeon, hypnotist, and hypnotherapist

Original Philosophy of Hypnotism The International College of Hypnosis & Hypnotherapy

Nature

“Education is a monstrosity when it is unequal, when it is the exclusive patrimony of one class of the society; because education then becomes the controlling hand of this class, a mass of mechanisms, a provision of weapons of all kinds, by which the ruling class combats the other class, which is disarmed.”

François-Noël Babeuf (1760–1797) French political agitator and journalist of the French Revolutionary period

L'éducation est une monstruosité lorsqu'elle est inégale, lorsqu'elle est le patrimoine exclusif d'une portion de l'association; puisqu'alors elle devient la main de cette portion, un amas de machines, une provisions d'armes de toutes sortes, à l'aide desquelles cette première portion combat l'autre qui est désarmé.
[in Gracchus Babeuf avec les Egaux, Jean-Marc Shiappa, Les éditions ouvrières, 1991, 49, 27082 2892-7, Manifeste des Plébéien]
On education

“Suppose, now, there is such a thing as an all-round inferior race. Is that any reason why we should propose to preserve it for ever…? Whether there is a race so inferior I do not know, but certainly there is no race so superior as to be trusted with human charges. The true answer to Aristotle’s plea for slavery, that there are “natural slaves,” lies in the fact that there are no “natural” masters… The true objection to slavery is not that it is unjust to the inferior but that it corrupts the superior. There is only one sane and logical thing to be done with a really inferior race, and that is to exterminate it. Now there are various ways of exterminating a race, and most of them are cruel. You may end it with fire and sword after the old Hebrew fashion; you may enslave it and work it to death, as the Spaniards did the Caribs; you may set it boundaries and then poison it slowly with deleterious commodities, as the Americans do with most of their Indians; you may incite it to wear clothing to which it is not accustomed and to live under new and strange conditions that will expose it to infectious diseases to which you yourselves are immune, as the missionaries do the Polynesians; you may resort to honest simple murder, as we English did with the Tasmanians; or you can maintain such conditions as conduce to “race suicide,” as the British administration does in Fiji. Suppose, then, for a moment, that there is an all-round inferior race… If any of the race did, after all, prove to be fit to survive, they would survive—they would be picked out with a sure and automatic justice from the over-ready condemnation of all their kind. Is there, however, an all-round inferior race in the world? Even the Australian black-fellow is, perhaps, not quite so entirely eligible for extinction as a good, wholesome, horse-racing, sheep-farming Australian white may think. These queer little races, the black-fellows, the Pigmies, the Bushmen, may have their little gifts, a greater keenness, a greater fineness of this sense or that, a quaintness of the imagination or what not, that may serve as their little unique addition to the totality of our Utopian civilisation. We are supposing that every individual alive on earth is alive in Utopia, and so all the surviving “black-fellows” are there. Every one of them in Utopia has had what none have had on earth, a fair education and fair treatment, justice, and opportunity…Some may be even prosperous and admired, may have married women of their own or some other race, and so may be transmitting that distinctive thin thread of excellence, to take its due place in the great synthesis of the future.”

H. G. Wells book A Modern Utopia

Source: A Modern Utopia (1905), Ch. 10, sect. 3

Death, Women, World, Disease

“At one time, I was an actor in the conduct of foreign policy. I became convinced that I was accomplishing nothing in that capacity, that the problems were deeper, that the answer lay in a direct approach to the public and in an effort to explain to the public what it was really about. Today, even that seems futile. Myths and errors are being established in the public mind more rapidly than they can be broken down. The mass media are too much for us. There is nothing that can be done about it. To correct this, you would have to educate the educators. I must say that I have lost all confidence in the freedom of the mass media. The fact of the matter is that in this country McCarthyism has already won, in the sense of making impossible the conduct of an intelligent foreign policy.”

George F. Kennan (1904–2005) American advisor, diplomat, political scientist and historian

April 17, 1951
The Kennan Diaries

Error, Confidence, Intelligence, Problem

“Tis well enough for a servant to be bred at an University. But the education is a little too pedantic for a gentleman.”

William Congreve Love for Love

Act V, scene iii
Love for Love (1695)

Universe

“What has happened to the monastery? There it was planted in the hills, not merely looking after the spiritual needs of the people, but also their temporal needs…They have all gone. One of these parishes I find to-day with a tithe, and probably the land was owned by gentlemen who, when I was down there twenty years ago, was the anti-disestablishment candidate for that district. What is the good of talking about it? Whoever else has got a right to complain of Parliament not being authorised to deal with this trust; the present Establishment has no right, and the present House of Lords has no right. Property which was used for the sick, for the lame, for the poor, and for education, where has it gone to? …the bulk of it went to the founders of great families. It is one of the most disgraceful and discreditable records in the history of this country.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1912/may/16/second-reading-fourth-days-debate in the House of Commons (12 May 1912) on the Bill to disestablish the Anglican church in Wales Chancellor of the Exchequer

People, Family, History, Housing

“Even after the part with the Ten Commandments, we still have God's self-appointed prophet ordering his army of barbaric thieves to pillage villages, killing every man, woman and child, but ironically some predominantly atheist countries in the modern world have finally achieved that sort of peaceful society [purported to be the product of a land governed under Mosaic law], with high education [and] very low crime, and the greatest threat to that comes from religious fundamentalists.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Youtube, Other, The Damn Commandments https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8u3z69YpLx0 (January 7, 2015)

God, World, Peace, Law

“The reviewers of fifty years ago knew that their primary loyalty must lie not with their fellow poets or publishers but with the reader. Consequently they reported their reactions with scrupulous honesty even when their opinions might lose them literary allies and writing assignments. In discussing new poetry they addressed a wide community of educated readers. Without talking down to their audience, they cultivated a public idiom. Prizing clarity and accessibility they avoided specialist jargon and pedantic displays of scholarship. They also tried, as serious intellectuals should but specialists often do not, to relate what was happening in poetry to social, political, and artistic trends. They charged modern poetry with cultural importance and made it the focal point of their intellectual discourse.”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

Essays, Can Poetry Matter? (1991)

Lie, Communication, Loyalty

“I was literally waiting till I turned 18 so I could do that [nude posing] with PETA. It's something I was passionate about at a young age. I was educating my mom and sister, and encouraging as many people as possible not to eat meat and the reasons behind it. That poster is something I'm really proud I did to raise awareness for a cause I believe in. It's one of my proudest moments.”

Christian Serratos (1990) American actress

"Christian Serratos Interview" https://uk.askmen.com/hermanos/success/christian-serratos-interview.html, interview with AskMen (26 March 2014).

People, Age, Moms, Sister

“Goethe, … who lived through the struggle against Napoleon, was once asked how he had managed to exist during the days of shame, defeat, and humiliation. He replied: “I have nothing to complain of. Like one who, from the fastness of a cliff, gazes down on the raging sea, unable to help the ship-wrecked crew, but also out of the reach of the billows—according to Lucretius, a not unpleasant feeling—I have been standing in security, and have watched the fury of the storm passing by me.” …
It was not only on the political combats and storms of his emasculate fellow-countrymen that Goethe looked down with indifference; to those troubles of the heart, which Rousseau’s teaching had quickened, a philanthropic and educational enthusiasm, he was not merely apathetic; he was positively hostile. … “As of old Lutherdom, so now French ideals are forcing us away from a peaceful development of culture,” he used to say.”

Oscar Levy (1867–1946) German physician and writer

Source: The Revival of Aristocracy (1906), pp. 29-30.

Hostility, Peace, Feeling, Rage

“Here, in India, the problem is peculiar. Our trade tends steadily to expand and it is possible to demonstrate by means of statistics the increasing prosperity of the country generally. On the other hand, we in India know that the ancient handicrafts are decaying, that the fabrics for which India was renowned in the past are supplanted by the products of Western looms, and that our industries are not displaying that renewed vitality which will enable them to compete successfully in the home or the foreign market. The cutivator on the margin of subsistence remains a starveling cultivator, the educated man seeks Government employment or the readily available profession of a lawyer, while the belated artisan works on the lines marked out for him by his forefathers for a return that barely keeps body and soul together. It is said that India is dependent on agriculture and must always remain so. That may be so; but there can, I venture to think, be little doubt that the solution of the ever recurring famine problem is to be found not merely in the improvement of agriculture, the cheapening of loans, or the more equitable distribution of taxation, but still more in the removal from the land to industrial pursuits of a great portion of those, who, at the best, gain but a miserable subsistence, and on the slightest failure of the season are thrown on public charity. It is time for us in India to be up and doing; new markets must be found, new methods adopted and new handicrafts developed, whilst the educated unemployed, no less than the skilled and unskilled labourers, all those, in fact, whose precarious means of livelihood is a standing menace to the well-being of the State must find employment in reorganised and progressive industries It seems to me that what we want is more outside light and assistance from those interested in industries. Our schools should not be left entirely to officials who are either fully occupied with their other duties or whose ideas are prone, in the nature of things, to run in official grooves. I should like to see all those who "think" and “know" giving us their active assistance and not merely their criticism of our results. It is not Governments or forms of Government that have made the great industrial nations, but the spirit of the people and the energy of one and all working to a common end.”

Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV (1884–1940) King of Mysore

On the occasion of the opening of Industrial and Arts Exhibition on 26 December 1903 in Madras (now known as Chennai) Modern_Mysore, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar Open University, 26 November 2013, archive.org, 203 http://archive.org/stream/modernmysore035292mbp/modernmysore035292mbp_djvu.txt, As ruler of the state

People, School, Home, Soul